The world is a complicated place, which is strange, seeing as how most
of the laws of the universe are amazingly simple. The best creative ideas
too can often be simple. You know, the ones that, when other people show
you, seem obvious. But why, then, didn’t you think of them?

‘Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count
more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump
the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. I say, let your affairs be as two
or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a
dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.’

‘In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and
storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man
has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port
at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who
succeeds. Simplify, simplify.’

‘I’ll tell you what you need to be a great scientist. You don’t have to be
able understand very complicated things. It’s just the opposite. You have to be
able to see what looks like the most complicated thing in the world and, in a
flash, find the underlying simplicity. That’s what you need: a talent for
simplicity.’